Black Ops 4’s battle royale beta kicks off Sept. 10

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4’s take on battle royale multiplayer modes, Blackout, will be playable for the first time starting Sept. 10 during a limited beta on Playstation 4. The beta will be playable on Xbox One and PC a few days later, on Sept. 14 for players who have pre-ordered the game. For PC players, Activision is also opening the beta up to all players that have a BattleNet account starting on Sept. 15.

In a tweet from the official Call of Duty Twitter account, Activision and Treyarch teased a bit more about Blackout, noting that players will be able to play solo, as a duo or in a squad of four players. It’s still not clear how many total players the Blackout mode will support.

Treyarch announced the Blackout mode at the reveal event for Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 in May. The battle royale-style mode will include characters, weapons and vehicles from the Black Ops franchise, and players will fight on a massive map that includes familiar locations like Nuketown scattered throughout the battlefield.

Activision and Treyarch gave Call of Duty fans a brief glimpse of Blackout in action in July, showing a group of players on ATVs battling a squad hovering overhead in a helicopter.

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 will be released on PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One on Oct. 12.

Update (Aug. 20): The Blackout beta for Black Ops 4 will go live on PC and Xbox One on Sept. 14, four days after it debuts on PS4. In a tweet from the Treyarch PC account, the studio said that the PC beta will begin at 1 p.m. EDT that day; a specific start time has not been announced on PS4 or Xbox One.

For the PC version, those release details apply only to Black Ops 4 pre-order customers. Everybody else — i.e., anybody who has a PC and a Battle.net account — will be able to try the beta 24 hours later, at 1 p.m. EDT on Sept. 15. On both PS4 and Xbox One, the beta will be limited to people who have pre-ordered the game.